Amy Lowell

Originally published in 1926, this book by Clement Wood is a critical study of the creative work and influence of noted American poet Amy Lawrence Lowell (1874-1925), whose “glittering verses, her militant prefaces and critical studies, her constant packed platform appearances had elevated her to a commanding place,” and had earned her a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926. Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, Amy Lowell, who was sister to astronomer Percival Lowell and Harvard president Abbott Lawrence Lowell, published her first work in 1910 in Atlantic Monthly. This was followed two years later by her first published collection of her poetry, A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass.

An avid adherent to the “free verse” method of poetry, Amy Lowell became one of the major champions of this method of poetry-writing. Throughout her working life, she was a promoter of both contemporary and historical poets. Her 1921 book Fir-Flower Tablets was a poetical reworking of literal translations of the works of ancient Chinese poets, notably Li Tai-po (A.D. 701-762). Her writing also included critical works on French literature. At the time of her death in 1925, she was attempting to complete her two-volume biography of John Keats, of whom she wrote: “the stigma of oddness is the price a myopic world always exacts of genius.”